Instances are known to occur when a user of a privacy partition stall, such as a bathroom stall or fitting room, may encounter a distressful situation where said user of the stall may be unable to work the lever of the stall door latch lock and allow the stall door to be opened. Unfortunately current methods to gain access to a locked stall door to provide assistance to a person who has for some reason become incapacitated inside the stall involve either crawling under the stall door or climbing over the stall door or a wall of the stall partition. Stall door manufacturers do offer doors that can be lifted up and swung outward to gain access, but this method is cumbersome, time consuming and potentially dangerous, should the first responder lose control of the door and injure the person in distress. After extensive research this inventor decided to improve over these inefficient methods of reaching such a person to provide them aid.
Tools were known in the relevant art for emergency opening of doors for access to the interiors of dwellings and vehicles.
One category of the existing art addresses the need to gain access to the interior of a locked vehicle from a location exterior to the vehicle operator's compartment. In this application locksmiths commonly use tools which include probe-like portions which can be inserted between the glass window of a vehicle and the hollow door supporting the window and which include end portions that are designed to manipulate the locking mechanism in the interior of the door. Examples of such devices are shown in Fanberg U.S. Pat. No. 4,683,783, Parkins U.S. Pat. No. 4,655,102, Williams U.S. Pat. No. 4,873,897, and Selby U.S. Pat. No. 4,882,954. Child U.S. Pat. No. 6,591,473 teaches an additional method of releasing the door lock of an automotive vehicle from a location exterior to the vehicle. The tool includes an elongated rod-like probe which can be inserted between the vehicle door and its door frame. Once the probe is inserted into the vehicle operator's compartment, the tip of the probe can be used to manipulate an unlocking mechanism inside the vehicle. This tool would be unsuitable for use for unlocking privacy partition latches, in which the latch is near to the tool user but not visible.
Another common application in the field of locksmithing addresses the need to open key locks embedded within barrier doors or doorknobs. FIG. 1A shows a typical prior art tensioning tool also known as a torsion wrench for biasing the rotational position of a lock plug within a lock casing so that a lock pick may be effective. Such a tool typically has a flattened head 1 at one or both ends which in the latter case may be of differing lengths and connecting member 2 perpendicular or near perpendicular thereto. Alternatively the head may be stepped in transition for accessing within recessed knob surfaces. The shaft is at least in part flattened in the general plane of the tool in order to provide a hand contact surface as opposed to an edge in the direction of force application as the tool is inserted within a lock and twisted. Such a torsion wrench tool is designed to be used in combination with lock picks such as those described in Tobias et al U.S. Pat. No. 8,302,439 and Randall U.S. Pat. No. 6,151,936. Tobias et al show an angulated thin-wire tool 60 in FIG. 7 which is sized and adapted to be inserted into a keyway of a pin-tumbler type lock in order to engage the slider within the keyway. Randall teaches use of a stepped tip retainer pick for insertion into a padlock keyway.
Additional lock tools are designed to open locked doors to building partitions from a location exterior to the partition. Helmers U.S. Pat. No. 5,540,121 pertains to a tool designed to open a locked door which has a circular doorknob on its interior side. The tool comprises a cup rotatably mounted to an arm and handle section. The cup can be collapsed to permit it to be passed underneath said door along with the attached arm. The handle section, which remains on the outside of the door, can then be used to manipulate the orientation and position of said arm and cup so that the open side of the cup is fitted over the doorknob. Means are provided so that the user is able to cause the cup to grip and turn the doorknob to open the door. Dyer U.S. Pat. No. 5,123,307 is directed to a similar device as described in Helmers but which uses a grip pad which can engage the doorknob and open the door.
FIGS. 1B through 1D show examples of locksmith tools for accessing and manipulating door latches which are recessed within a door and/or covered by a rabbet or door jamb. FIG. 1B shows a wire tool of spring-steel comprising a handle section 3 and a straight section 4 which is designed to be bent by the user by trial and error to access the rabbet or groove of a door jamb in order to manipulate a latch bolt in a relatively time unconstrained process. FIGS. 1C1 and 1C2 show variants of preformed three-dimensionally angulated wire needles for respectively manipulating slide and pivoted throw latches such as found in a flight door. FIGS. 1D1 and 1D2 show very thin 1-2 mm diameter wire tools of ‘stairstep’ and corkscrew types which are used to access a door jamb in order to manipulate for example that portion of the bolt of a doorknob assembly which is extending into the strike plate.
Devices such as shown in FIGS. 1C1-2 and 1D1-2 are structurally complex, spatially bulky, and subject to entanglement when incorporated into a rescue kit for emergency personnel. The devices in FIGS. 1B through 1D are unsuitable for storage within their handle which is typically a space-consuming addend. The device in FIG. 1B has an additional disadvantage in that it must be bent by trial and error, which would render it undesirable for use in time-constrained rescue situations.